Please don’t shoot the messenger
We know it’s wrong to shoot the message carrier, but that doesn’t stop many playing the blame game, writes Gary Martin
AN airline attendant tells you that your flight has been cancelled. A retail assistant explains that your urgent order has been delayed indefinitely. A call centre operator informs you that your insurance company refuses to pay your claim.
Even though we know that front-line employees are mostly the bearers of bad news rather than the creators of it, we have a dreadful track record for “shooting the messenger”.
During the pandemic, the practice of shooting the messenger seemed to take off as much as baking bread and binge-watching the hit series The Squid Game.
We’ve managed to shoot down everyone from health officials who have communicated unpopular decisions made by politicians, to journalists who have failed to adequately sugar-coat grim news about the pandemic’s casualty rates, to restaurant staff enforcing vaccination mandates.
Most recently we have directed our blame towards those working on the front line in the besieged travel industry.
We know it’s wrong to shoot the message carrier, but that has not stopped the frothing hordes at airports and hospitality hot spots around the country from playing the blame game.
There’s any number of possible explanations as to why we tend to defy logic and blame message bearers instead of those ultimately responsible.
In a recent study published in the Harvard Business Review, researchers discovered that we have a natural in-built tendency to shoot the messenger even though we know that they are not personally responsible. The study concluded that we attempt to make sense of unfair or untimely bad news by making ill-considered and adverse judgments about our messengers – in other words, holding them accountable or to blame for things outside their control.
We convince ourselves that the bearer of bad news is incompetent, has malicious intentions or has the power to fix a difficult situation fast but simply does not want to.
An alternative explanations of our odd behaviour is that by “killing off” the messenger, we mistakenly believe we will be able to kill off the bad news itself. Another is that blaming front-facing employees instead of those higher up might be something to do with the message carrier’s proximity.
Regrettably, we appear to be naturally wired to blame those who tell us the things that we don’t want to hear.
While it might be difficult to reverse our well-ingrained practice of shooting the messenger, there is one piece of advice that might help suppress our urge to lay the blame squarely at the feet of a front-line employee.
We can attempt to live by the golden rule that tells us that we should treat others the way we want to be treated.
That can be as simple as asking ourselves a single question: Given a reversal of roles, would you want someone else to unfairly place the blame on you?